System and method for displaying trend indications

ABSTRACT

A system and method for displaying a trend indication using a primary and secondary indicia. The primary indicium corresponds to an overall trend indication and the secondary indicia relate to the reliability of the overall trend indication. The secondary indicia correspond to a trend indication for each phase of the selected analysis strategy. The secondary indicia provide the user with a quick and easy methodology to ascertain the reliability of the overall trend indication based on the concurrence or disagreement of the secondary indicia with the primary indicium.

RELATED APPLICATIONS

The present patent application is a continuation of U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 11/480,078, filed Jun. 30, 2006, and entitled “ASystem and Method for Displaying Trend Indications,” the entire contentsof which is incorporated herein by reference.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present invention relates to a system and method for displayingtrend indications based on the analysis of security price fluctuationsover a period of time.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Technical analysis began more than 100 years ago with the use of charts.For example, candlestick charts were originally developed in Japan over150 years ago to anticipate movements in the rice market. For years,technicians have tried to identify patterns in individual stock prices,the market as a whole, or even in a particular industry segment.Technical analysis involves identifying and interpreting stock pricemovements to predict future movements in the price of a stock. However,charts only reveal data of past price movements. Therefore, in technicalanalysis, past price movements are often combined with knowledge abouthistorical cycles in the market when predicting future stock prices.

Initially, technical analysis involved a very manually intensive processof identifying trends within charts. Therefore, technical analysis wasnot beneficial to most investors. This is due to the time delay that itwould take to develop the technical analysis manually, and disseminatethe information to traders. In addition, the information would beprovided to many traders at rather granular intervals, making theinformation less valuable. With advances in computer hardware andsoftware for identifying patterns in sets of data, technical analysiscan now be performed on computers in a real time fashion.

The speed at which the data is processed also allows the user toevaluate the data based on more complex analysis strategies includingmultiple independent or interdependent algorithms. Accordingly, uptrend,downtrend, or neutral indications can be obtained by applying multiplealgorithms within a single analysis strategy. One such analysis strategycan be applied using moving average convergence divergence (MACD).Thomas Aspry developed the MACD histogram in 1986. The (MACD) is one ofthe simplest and most reliable indicators available. The most popularformula for the standard MACD is the difference between a security'stwenty-six day and twelve day exponential moving averages (EMA). A plotof this difference may be presented as a histogram. In addition,multiple criteria may be used to evaluate the histogram to formulate anuptrend, downtrend, or neutral trend indication.

A variety of software applications are available for displaying uptrendand downtrend indications. For example, it is well known to displaysecurity price data over a period of time in the form of a chart. Movingaverages and other indicators are then drawn over the top of or adjacentto the price data and are aligned temporally. To provide a quickoverview to investors, software was developed that includes visualindicators such as colored up and down arrows indicating whether theprice of the security has moved up or down relative to the previousday's closing price. For example, it is well known to use a greenindicator such as an arrow or some other symbol to indicate that theprice of a security has moved up relative to the prior closing price,and to use a red arrow or some other symbol to indicate that thesecurity price has moved down relative to its previous close. It is wellknown to display a security stock symbol in a cell or block with a colorto indicate whether the stock price is up or down for the day. It isalso well known to indicate the current stock price as well as apercentage change in that price for a given day in combination with arange of colors or shades indicating by percentage how much the stockprice have gone up or down. Other software programs have combined thecell or block displays with the use of various color schemes or shadesof color to rank a particular security. For example, one trading tooloffered by J.S. Services and marketed under the name Market Color uses avariety of colors and shades to indicate whether the underlying securityshould be bought, held or sold. The Market Color tool displays aparticular security and the current price of the security including anychanges in the price of the security since the previous close.

Although products have previously been introduced that display uptrendor downtrend indicators, the user cannot easily ascertain thereliability of the indicator or understand what criteria were used indetermining the trend indication. In view of the above, it is apparentthat there exists a need for an improved system and method fordisplaying a trend indication.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In satisfying the above need, as well as overcoming the drawbacks andother limitations of the related art, the present invention provides animproved system and method for displaying a trend indication. The systemdisplays an indicator including a primary indicium and secondaryindicia. The primary indicium corresponds to an overall trend indicationand the secondary indicia relate to the reliability of the overall trendindication. The secondary indicia correspond to a trend indication foreach phase or factor of a selected analysis strategy. Accordingly, thesecondary indicia provide the user with a quick and easy methodology toascertain the reliability of the overall trend indication based on theconcurrence or disagreement of the secondary indicia with the primaryindicium. In one example, the indicator may have a semicircularconfiguration where the secondary indicia form a band around thecircumference of the primary indicium. The band may be broken up intomultiple segments giving the appearance of a gauge on a dashboard of avehicle. The multiple segments within the band may be representative ofa trend indication for each phase of the analysis strategy. Accordingly,the primary indicium may turn green to indicate an uptrend, yellow toindicate neutral, and red to indicate a downtrend. Each secondaryindicium or segment may turn the same color as the primary indicium whenin agreement with the overall trend indication. However, the secondaryindicium may be shown in a different color, for example white, orwithout a background color when in neutral or disagreement with theoverall trend indication.

Many such indicators may be provided on a page or display screen andcategorized according to a particular issue (stock, commodity, option,or the like) and may be categorized relative to a given time criteria.The indicator may also include text that identifies the indicator ascorresponding to a particular issue, or a particular time period, forexample, an hour, a day, a week, or a month. In addition, the user mayclick on the indicator including the primary indicium or secondaryindicia to access additional information, charts, analysis, orparameters related to either the security data, the analysis strategyresults, or the analysis strategy configuration. Accordingly, the useris able to quickly react to market conditions to buy or sell any issuein the portfolio based on the market trend.

Further objects, features and advantages of this invention will becomereadily apparent to persons skilled in the art after a review of thefollowing description, with reference to the drawings and claims thatare appended to and form a part of this specification.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a schematic view of a system for displaying trend indications;

FIG. 2 is a flowchart of a method for displaying trend indications;

FIG. 3 is an illustration of a display including a primary signalindicium and secondary signal indicia;

FIG. 4 is an illustration of a display including a plurality of primaryand secondary signal indicia for a portfolio of securities.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Referring now to FIG. 1, a system embodying the principles of thepresent invention is illustrated therein and designated at 10. Thesystem 10 includes a processor 12, a display 14, and a networkconnection 15.

The processor 12 may be embodied in a personal computer, however,personal digital assistants, mobile phones, and other like processingunits may be readily substituted and are contemplated herein. As such, aprocessor 12 may operate based on any commonly known operating system,such as Windows, LINUX, MacOS, or any similar operating system includingany embedded variant. The processor 12 is in electrical communicationwith a display 14. The display 14 may be packaged with the processor 12,for example in a personal digital assistant. Alternatively, the display14 may be remote from the processor 12 or even in wireless communicationwith the processor 12.

The processor 12 is also in communication with a network connection 15and is configured to receive securities data 20 through the networkconnection 15. As such, the processor 12 may be in communication with anetwork 18, such as the Internet, to receive securities data 20 from ahost server. For example, the processor 12 may communicate with the hostserver to receive the security data 20 in a ticker plant mode or throughcommercially available Active X components in real time from the hostserver. One example of Active X components utilize TalTrade querylanguage (TQL) which can be used to access the securities data 20 overthe internet.

In addition, the processor 12 may be in electrical communication with astorage device 16 to aid in the analysis of the securities data 20 orthe configuration of the display. The storage device 16 may includerandom access memory, static memory, bulk storage such as hard diskdrives or CD ROMs, or any similar devices. Accordingly, the software andconfiguration files may be contained within the storage device 16 tocoordinate the functioning of the processor 12. The processor 12functions to retrieve securities data 20 through the network connection15, analyze the securities data 20 to generate a trend indication, andrender indicia on the display 14 that correspond to the trendindication.

Now referring to FIG. 2, a method 40 is provided for analyzing anddisplaying trend indications. The method 40 begins in block 42. The usercreates a portfolio of securities (commonly called issues) in block 44.The portfolio is a list of associated securities that is defined by theuser. Accordingly, the user associates issues with the portfolio, asdenoted by block 46. In block 48, the user selects an analysis strategyto be implemented by the processor 12. The analysis strategy may beselected from many various analysis strategies, including but notlimited to Elliott Waves, price range, price change, stochastics, movingaverage, volume, MACD, Average Directional Indicator (ADX), DirectionalIndicator (DX-DMI), Expert Trend Locator (XTL), Profit Taking Index(PTI), Oscillator Pullback, Oscillator Breakout, Auto Channels,Directional Movement Index (DMI), Joseph Trend Index (JTI), CommodityChannel Index (CCI), and other strategies.

In block 50, the processor 12 is configured to retrieve securities data20, for example through the network connection 15. The processor 12 mayalso buffer the securities data 20 in the storage device 16 to improveprocessing bandwidth. The processor 12 performs analysis of thesecurities data 20, as denoted in block 52. The analysis of thesecurities data 20, according to the selected analysis strategy, mayinclude a series of analysis steps. For example, using a MACD analysisstrategy an uptrend signal may be generated by three events: a positivedivergence, a bullish moving average crossover, and a bullish centerlinecrossover. A positive divergence occurs when the MACD begins to advanceand the security is still in a downward price trend. A bullish movingaverage crossover occurs when the MACD moves above its nine day EMA ortrigger line. A bullish centerline crossover occurs when the MACD movesabove the zero line and into positive territory. Although each event maybe independently used to generate an uptrend or downtrend indication,each event may be used in conjunction as a different phase of theanalysis strategy. For example, moving average crossovers are sometimesused to confirm a positive divergence. After a positive divergence andthe bullish moving average crossover, the centerline crossover can actas an additional confirmation signal. Using a combination of each phasecan generate a more robust signal.

The MACD may generate bearish signals from three main events: negativedivergence, bearish moving average crossover, and bearish centerlinecrossover. The negative divergence forms when the security advances ormoves sideways and MACD declines. A bearish moving average crossoveroccurs when the MACD declines below its nine day EMA. Although thesesignals are commonly used to generate a trend indication, they mayproduce false signals in many instances. As such, it is recommended thata negative divergence or a bearish moving average crossover should beconfirmed with other signals, for example a bearish centerlinecrossover. A bearish centerline crossover occurs when the MACD movesbelow zero and into negative territory. The centerline crossover can actas an independent signal or confirm a prior phase of the analysis suchas a moving average crossover or a negative divergence. As with bullishMACD signals, bearish signals can be combined to create more robustsignals.

As described with regard to the MACD analysis strategy, an overall trendindication may be based on multiple phases of analysis to provideimproved reliability. Further, each phase may utilize a uniquealgorithm. Therefore, separate trend indications may be independentlydetermined based on each of the phases of the analysis strategy to givethe user an indication as to the reliability of the overall trendindication. To determine the overall trend indication, the trendindications from each phase may be combined using any one of multipletechniques. For example, the combination may be performed using aweighting and/or thresholding of the trend indications for each phase ofthe analysis strategy.

Alternatively, the overall trend indication may be generated by one ormore phases while another phase may be one or more independentalgorithms used to confirm the reliability of the overall trendindication. For example, a stochastic strategy may include a stochasticalgorithm to determine the overall indicator and an independent no falsebar algorithm to confirm the reliability of the stochastic algorithm.Accordingly, the stochastic algorithm provides the status of the overalltrend indicator and primary indicium while the no false bar algorithmprovides the status for a secondary indicium. In this example, theindicator may have one primary indicium and one single secondaryindicium to confirm the reliability of the primary indicium.

Referring again to FIG. 2, the processor determines the status of thetrend indication for each phase of the analysis, as denoted in block 54.Further, as denoted in block 56, the status of the overall trendindication is determined, for example, based on the status of the trendindication corresponding to each phase of the analysis strategy. Thestatus of the trend indication may include an uptrend, downtrend, orneutral status. However, the status may include other alternatives thatare easily evaluated by the user, for example a binary indicator.

In block 57, the processor 12 renders indicia on the display 14indicative of the overall trend indication, as well as indiciacorresponding to the trend indication for each phase of the analysisstrategy. As such, the indicia may be color-coded corresponding to thestatus of the trend indication. For example, green may correspond to anuptrend status, yellow may correspond to a neutral status, and red maycorrespond to a downtrend status. In one embodiment, the indiciumcorresponding to the overall trend indication may be rendered in green,yellow, and red corresponding to uptrend, neutral, and downtrend.Further, the indicia corresponding to each phase may be colored to matchthe indicium corresponding to the overall trend indication when inagreement with the overall trend indication, and may be rendered inanother color such as white when the trend indication is neutral ordisagrees with the overall trend indication. Utilizing a displaystrategy in this manner, allows the user to quickly scan for certaincolors and easily confirm the reliability of the trend indication basedon the area or geometry of the color. In addition, by furtheridentifying which areas are missing from the confirming indicia, theuser may determine which phases of the analysis strategy did not matchthe overall trend indication. This concept may also be applied such thatthe shape of the secondary indicia change based on agreement ordisagreement with the overall trend indicia.

In block 58, the system 10 determines if the data is to be updated orif, for example, additional configuration or alternate evaluation hasbeen selected by the user. If the data is to be updated, the methodproceeds along line 60 to block 62. In block 62, the system 10 updatesthe securities data 20 and performs additional analysis on the updateddata, as noted by block 52. If the data is not to be updated, the methodproceeds along line 64 to block 66 where the method ends.

Now referring to FIG. 3, an illustration of a display including indiciacorresponding to a trend indication is provided. Accordingly, anindicator 70 is shown as a semicircle. The semicircular shape of theindicator 70 provides the user a familiar feel similar to that of agauge in a dashboard in a vehicle. The indicator 70 includes a primarysignal indicium 72 indicative of the overall trend indication from theanalysis. As described above, the primary signal indicium 72 may berendered in a color such as green, yellow, or red to correspond to atrend indication status such as uptrend, neutral, or downtrend. Theprimary signal indicium 72 may include a contiguous area of the displayand may take the form of a semicircle. In addition, text 74 may beprovided on the primary signal indicium 72. The text 74 may, forexample, correspond to a time period, an issue, or a strength related tothe trend indication or the analysis strategy.

Secondary signal indicia 76, 78, 80, 82 are also provided and correspondto the trend indication for each phase of the analysis strategy. Thesecondary signal indicia 76, 78, 80, 82 may be located about theperiphery of the primary signal indicium 72. As such, the primary andsecondary indicia of the indicator 70 may form a recognizable geometry.The geometry shown is a semicircle, however, the indicator may take theform of other geometries including, but not limited to squares,triangles, and circles. Further, the geometry may form a singlecontiguous region, although a series of discontinuous regions may alsobe used.

Allowing the user to easily scan the status of each indicium, thesecondary signal indicia 76, 78, 80, 82 may be located in a seriesconfiguration. For example, a first secondary signal indicium 76 may belocated adjacent to the second secondary signal indicium 78. Further,the first secondary signal indicium 76 may abut the second secondarysignal indicium 78, and may share a first edge 84. Similarly, a thirdsecondary signal indicium 80 may abut the second secondary signalindicium 78 and may share a second edge 86 opposite the first edge 84,and so on, thereby providing a contiguous series of secondary signalindicia 76, 78, 80, 82 that may be easily evaluated by the user inascertaining the reliability of the overall trend indication.

The indicator 70 may be readily extended to provide a display for anentire portfolio as illustrated by the graphical user interface in FIG.4. Accordingly, a region 100 is provided for displaying a plurality ofindicators for each issue in a portfolio. Further, other graphs,information, or charts may be provided on the display corresponding tothe portfolio. For example, chart 102 may provide last trade, pricechange, bid, and ask information for the issues in the portfolio.Further, graph 104 provides price information over a period of time, forexample in candlestick form, optionally including other technicalanalysis such as moving average, oscillation, stochastic, or similarinformation.

The region 100 may include sub-regions 106 that group informationrelated to a specific issue. One such sub-region is denoted by referencenumeral 108. Sub-region 108 includes an issue symbol 110. The issuesymbol may be the letters used to identify the security on an exchange,such as DOW, NASDAQ, or CBOE. In addition, the sub-region 108 mayinclude an indicator 112 that denotes whether the stock has gone up ordown relative to the previous day's closing price. Similarly, thesub-region 108 may include the present stock price 114 and the change inthe stock price from the previous day's close, as denoted by referencenumeral 116. Further, a plurality of indicators 118, 120, 122, and 124may be provided corresponding to multiple trend indications for aparticular issue. The indicators 118, 120, 122, and 124 may take theform of indicator 70 (from FIG. 3) including any of the variationsdescribed above. In addition, indicators 118, 120, 122, and 124 maycorrespond to the same analysis strategy, or provide trend indicationsbased on the analysis strategy according to a different time period ofsecurities data. For example, indicator 118 may include the primary andsecondary indicia for an analysis strategy according to the last hour ofsecurities data. Meanwhile, indicator 120 may include primary andsecondary indicia for the same analysis strategy according to thesecurities data for the previous day. Similarly, indicator 122 mayinclude primary and secondary indicia corresponding to trend indicationsfor the same analysis strategy according to the last week of securitiesdata, while indicator 124 may correspond to trend indications for theanalysis strategy according to the last month of security data.

In addition, the indicators may be integrated into the graphical userinterface such that the primary indicium or secondary indicia may beselected, for example by a mouse click, to provide access to additionalinformation, charts or analysis related to either the security data, theanalysis strategy results, or the analysis strategy configuration. Forexample, clicking the indicator may display a graphical representationof the analysis. Further, when the user selects a new analysis strategy,the system may be configured to automatically update the analysisstrategy for each indicator related to an issue, or additionally foreach issue in the portfolio. As such the user can quickly and easilyevaluate the entire portfolio using a new analysis strategy with asingle click.

Utilizing a primary and secondary indicia in the manner described above,a display may be provided allowing the user to quickly and easilyascertain trend indications as well as confirming the reliability ofsuch trend indications in an easy to understand manner.

As a person skilled in the art will readily appreciate, the abovedescription is meant as an illustration of the principles thisinvention. This description is not intended to limit the scope orapplication of this invention in that the invention is susceptible tomodification, variation and change, without departing from the spirit ofthis invention, as defined in the following claims.

1. A system for producing a trend indication to trade a security, thesystem comprising: a processor; a network connection in communicationwith the processor and configured to acquire market security data, theprocessor generating overall trend indication to trade a security basedon analysis of the security market data, wherein the analysis strategyhas a plurality of phases; a display in electrical communication withthe processor, wherein the processor analyzes security market dataaccording to an analysis strategy and renders a primary signal indiciumand at least one secondary signal indicium on the display, the primarysignal indicium being displayed in a first portion of a display areawherein the primary signal indicium is indicative of the overall trendindication to trade the security based on at least one phase of theplurality of phases, the at least one secondary signal indicium beingdisplayed in a second portion of the display area, each secondary signalindicium being based on a phase of the plurality of phases of theanalysis strategy, the at least one secondary signal indicium isindicative of the reliability of the overall trend indication, whereinthe primary signal indicium and the at least one secondary signalindicium form a contiguous display region, wherein each secondary signalindicium is colored to indicate agreement, neutrality, or disagreementwith the primary signal indicium.
 2. The system according to claim 1,wherein the overall trend indication includes one of an uptrend,downtrend, and neutral status.
 3. The system according to claim 1,wherein at least one trend indication of the plurality of phasesincludes one of an uptrend, downtrend, and neutral status.
 4. The systemaccording to claim 1, further comprising the step of displaying agraphical representation of the analysis in response to a user selectingthe primary or the at least one secondary signal indicium.
 5. The systemaccording to claim 1, further comprising the step of displaying aninterface configured to edit analysis parameters in response toselecting the primary indicium or the at least one secondary signalindicium.
 6. The system according to claim 1, wherein signal indicia ofthe at least one secondary signal indicium are arranged in a seriesconfiguration.
 7. The system according to claim 1, wherein the at leastone secondary signal indicium comprises a first, second, and thirdsecondary indicium arranged in a series configuration, the secondsecondary indicium having a first and second opposite edge, the firstsecondary indicium being located adjacent the first edge of the secondsecondary indicium, and the third secondary indicium being locatedadjacent the second edge of the second secondary indicium.
 8. The systemaccording to claim 7, wherein the first, second, and third secondarysignal indicia are arranged about the periphery of the primary signalindicium.
 9. The system according to claim 1, wherein a signal indiciumof at least one secondary signal indicium is rendered in a first,second, or third color corresponding to the overall trend indication ofthe primary signal indicium when the signal indicium is in agreementwith the primary signal indicium, and the signal indicium is rendered ina fourth color when the signal indicium is not in agreement with theprimary signal indicium.
 10. A method for displaying a trend indicationto trade a security, the method comprising: acquiring security marketdata; analyzing the security market data according to an analysisstrategy by a processor; generating an overall trend indication to tradea security based on analysis of the security market data, wherein theanalysis strategy has a plurality of phases each of which is indicativeof a trend indication by the processor; displaying a primary signalindicium in a first portion of a display area wherein the primary signalindicium is indicative of the overall trend indication to trade thesecurity based on at least one phase of the plurality of phases;displaying at least one secondary signal indicium in a second portion ofthe display area, each secondary signal indicium being based on a phaseof the plurality of phases of the analysis strategy, wherein each of theat least one secondary signal indicium is indicative of the reliabilityof the overall trend indication, the primary signal indicium and the atleast one secondary signal indicium forming a contiguous display region,wherein each secondary signal indicium is colored to indicate agreement,neutrality, or disagreement with the primary signal indicium.
 11. Themethod according to claim 10, wherein the overall trend indicationincludes one of a uptrend, downtrend, and neutral status.
 12. The methodaccording to claim 10, wherein a trend indication of each of theplurality of phases includes one of an uptrend, downtrend, and neutralstatus.
 13. The method according to claim 10, further comprising thestep of displaying a graphical representation of the analysis inresponse to selecting the primary or the at least one secondary signalindicium.
 14. The method according to claim 10, further comprising thestep of displaying an interface configured to edit analysis parametersin response to selecting the primary or the at least one secondarysignal indicium.
 15. The method according to claim 10, wherein signalindicia of the at least one secondary signal indicium are arranged in aseries configuration.
 16. The method according to claim 10, wherein theat least one secondary signal indicium are arranged such that a first,second, and third secondary indicium are arranged in a seriesconfiguration, the second secondary indicium having a first and secondopposite edge, the first secondary indicium is located adjacent thefirst edge of the second secondary indicium, and the third secondaryindicium is located adjacent the second edge of the second secondaryindicium.
 17. The method according to claim 16, wherein the first,second, and third secondary signal indicia are arranged about theperiphery of the primary signal indicium.
 18. The method according toclaim 10, wherein a signal indicium of at least one secondary signalindicium is rendered in a first, second, or third color corresponding tothe overall trend indication of the primary signal indicium when thesignal indicium is in agreement with the primary signal indicium, andthe signal indicium is rendered in a fourth color when the signalindicium is not in agreement with the primary signal indicium.
 19. Acomputer readable medium having stored therein instructions executableby a programmed processor for displaying a trend indication to trade asecurity, the computer readable medium comprising instructions for:acquiring security market data; analyzing the security market dataaccording to an analysis strategy; generating an overall trendindication to trade a security based on analysis of the security marketdata, wherein the analysis strategy has a plurality of phases each ofwhich is indicative of a trend indication; displaying a primary signalindicium in a first portion of a display area wherein the primary signalindicium is indicative of the overall trend indication to trade thesecurity based on at least one phase of the plurality of phases;displaying at least one secondary signal indicium in a second portion ofthe display area, each secondary signal indicium being based on a phaseof the plurality of phases of the analysis strategy, wherein each of theat least one secondary signal indicium is indicative of the reliabilityof the overall trend indication, the primary signal indicium and the atleast one secondary signal indicium forming a contiguous display region,wherein each secondary signal indicium is colored to indicate agreement,neutrality, or disagreement with the primary signal indicium.
 20. Thecomputer readable medium according to claim 19, wherein the at least onesecondary signal indicium are arranged such that a first, second, andthird secondary indicium are arranged in a series configuration, thesecond secondary indicium having a first and second opposite edge, thefirst secondary indicium is located adjacent the first edge of thesecond secondary indicium, and the third secondary indicium is locatedadjacent the second edge of the second secondary indicium.
 21. Thecomputer readable medium according to claim 20, wherein the first,second and third secondary signal indicia are arranged about theperiphery of the primary signal indicium.